Miles of strawberry blonde sand, bizarrely striking architecture and highly rated bargain spa treatments are stirred into the intriguing holiday mix at recently revamped Soviet accommodation on the Latvian coast.

The Baltic Beach Hotel, a former haunt of Russian presidents and politburo bigwigs, rears like a multi-tiered ocean liner behind the sand at the tourist hotspot of Jurmala. Its startlingly angular facade, a dramatic contrast to the resort's ornate wooden houses and sanatorium, offers ocean-facing rooms with their own terraces overlooking surf that sits under ice until March.

It's a very different prospect now. With temperatures nudging 25C, the vast beach becomes a sports playground, easily swallowing the row of 20 basketball hoops erected for three-a-side games, football pitches and volleyball courts. The briny hots up as well - Jurmala's sheltered location on the Gulf of Riga allows the water, whose clear dark colour has been compared to Guinness, to reach 20C, warmer than more exposed Latvian resorts like Liepaja.

But it isn't just the blue-flag beach that makes Jurmala, 30k west of Riga, a healthy choice. It originally developed as a spa resort using local sulphur springs to provide mud and water treatments. Baltic Beach continues that tradition today, offering ludicrously good value therapies.

Masks using mineral rich mud from nearby Kermere national park start from under a fiver, a clay body wrap is £14.60, and cryotherapy, an east European speciality involving a short sharp shock of severe cold to treat joint and muscle problems, is just £9.80.

If that sounds a wee bit heavy on the iron curtain and light on lemongrass, there's also Ayurvedic and volcanic stone massages, a champagne bath that immerses you in ozone-rich water and champagne bubbles to improve circulation and boost energy - at less than a tenner it's not vintage Krug so swallow at your peril - and yoga on the sand.